REVIEW: How the Hell Did I Not Know That? by Lucie Frost

Reviewed by Brian Watson

The chance to review a memoir is an incredible gift. In the past year alone, I’ve been lucky to write reviews for some of my favorite authors, including Jeremy Atherton Lin, Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Edmund White, and Melissa Febos.

But then an even rarer gift drops into your review pile: the opportunity to review something written by a friend. I first met Lucie Frost during a writing workshop several years ago and immediately followed her on Instagram.

In many ways, How the Hell Did I Not Know That? My Midlife Year from Couch to Curiosity (Trinity University Press; 2025) informed Lucie’s online presence. She cleverly selected excerpts from her memoir and crafted stories and reels from them. This approach works really well for one key reason: Her storytelling style makes the viewer want to hear more and read more.

In the early pages of the memoir, the reader discovers Lucie’s impetus for learning all the things she shares within those pages. It starts at a writing conference helmed by two powerhouse memoirists: Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert. As Lucie attends, she is struck by a key message, one she paraphrases:

“Deep down, you know what you need. This is your Clarity talking to you, and you should trust that inner voice, embracing the truth in you more strongly than the fear in you. You can’t get to any deeper truth or meaning in you without being open to hearing the first truth. One truth leads to another, which leads to another. Your job is simply to put the key in the door.”

After a writing exercise designed to expose that Clarity, together with a glass or two of Cabernet Sauvignon, Lucie makes a bold decision; she quits her job. (I feel you, Lucie. I think the reason I avoid psilocybin is my resistance to whatever life-changing prompts, whatever Clarity might result.)

The narrative arc of How The Hell Did I Not Know That?, therefore, is how in the hell did Lucie make it after her impromptu retirement with nary a plan. Although she begins her new life glued to her couch, watching bad reality television (although I can’t judge—I have watched every last episode of Canada’s Worst Driver), a decision quickly arrives. “While I’m watching television, I’m going to put my key in the door of curiosity by noticing any little thing I’d like to know more about.”

Lucie goes on to offer twelve more chapters, one for each month of her journey into knowledge, each with a dedicated direction for her curiosity. She learns more about animals, humans, her native Texas and beyond, religion, and much more. What makes this journey so much more than an encyclopedia of trivia, however, is the author’s (spoken and written) voice. As an Instagram follower, I couldn’t help but read her words in her twang. Doing so, for me, at least, makes her writing, complete with her asides and revelations, even funnier. Let me share some examples:

“In their raw form, sorghums look like pale pellets, similar to kernels of corn or small white beans. (The plural really is sorghums. It looks weird, doesn’t it? The whole word is weird, if you look at it long enough. Sorg-hums.)”

“Ironman basically started as a dick-measuring contest.”

“Since the exercise month — the body in motion — didn’t take, perhaps focusing on the body at rest is a better idea. I hope you enjoy this knowledge of body. (Get it? Knowledge of body? Instead of body of knowledge? I’m hilarious.)”

“Garlic does contain allicin (the liquid that makes garlic smell like garlic), which is an antifungal. But the scientific consensus is that allicin is only released if the garlic is crushed, so inserting the whole clove is useless and risks contaminating your hoo-ha (le hoo-ha) with soil bacteria.”

Another thing I particularly enjoyed about How the Hell Did I Not Know That? is that the vignettes, wherein Lucie explores each datum she did not know, are brief. I know that most people (and again, I can’t judge) are in the habit of bringing their cell phones with them into the lavatory. How the Hell Did I Not Know That? is the perfect tome (forgive me, Lucie) for reading while on the throne. Heck, you can finish a whole chapter if the constipation is particularly bad that day.

In all seriousness, this memoir is a refreshing change of pace. I have learned so much of great profundity while reading memoirs in my life, and How The Hell Did I Not Know has come along to remind me that memoirs can also teach you trivia in ways that will keep you laughing (out loud in my case — Lucie and I have similar senses of humor) while empathizing with Lucie’s journey.

“I guess I thought I would know most everything by the time I hit my fifties. Or that I wouldn’t know nearly enough but wouldn’t be capable of learning because my mind had been made mush by kids and work. But now that I have more free time and energy, I have space to notice all the things I do not know. I can have a passing wonder about gloveboxes and spend my whole day learning about them, if I’m so inclined. (I’m not.)”